Degradation of kanamycin from production wastewater with high-concentration organic matrices by hydrothermal treatment

It is known that many kinds of fermentative antibiotics can be removed by temperature-enhanced hydrolysis from production wastewater based on their easy-to-hydrolyze characteristics. However, a few aminoglycosides are hard to hydrolyze below 100°C because of their stability expressed by high molecular energy gap (ΔE). Herein, removal of hard-to-hydrolyze kanamycin residue from production wastewater by hydrothermal treatment at subcritical temperatures was investigated. The results showed the reaction temperature had a significant impact on kanamycin degradation. The degradation half-life (t₁/₂) was shortened by 87.17-fold when the hydrothermal treatment temperature was increased from 100°C to 180°C. The t₁/₂ of kanamycin in the N₂ process was extended by 1.08-1.34-fold compared to that of the corresponding air process at reaction temperatures of 140-180°C, indicating that the reactions during hydrothermal treatment process mainly include oxidation and hydrolysis. However, the contribution of hydrolysis was calculated as 75%-98%, which showed hydrolysis played a major role during the process, providing possibilities for the removal of kanamycin from production wastewaters with high-concentration organic matrices. Five transformation products with lower antibacterial activity than kanamycin were identified using UPLC-QTOF-MS analysis. More importantly, hydrothermal treatment could remove 97.9% of antibacterial activity (kanamycin EQ, 1,109 mg/L) from actual production wastewater with CODCᵣ around 100,000 mg/L. Furthermore, the methane production yield in anaerobic inhibition tests could be increased about 2.3 times by adopting the hydrothermal pretreatment. Therefore, it is concluded that hydrothermal treatment as a pretreatment technology is an efficient method for removing high-concentration hard-to-hydrolyze antibiotic residues from wastewater with high-concentration organic matrices.